With the development of the imaging technology, imaging devices, such as a laser printing device and an ink jet printing device etc have been widely applied. During imaging, the imaging device only can perform the imaging process with the aid of imaging auxiliary information of an imaging cartridge. The imaging auxiliary information of the imaging device is not only recorded in the imaging device, but also in a storage chip, as shown in FIG. 1, which is a schematic diagram of communication interaction between an imaging device and a storage chip in the prior art. Particularly, the storage chip is attached to (typically affixed to or embedded in) the imaging cartridge, the imaging cartridge can be an ink cartridge filled with ink or a toner cartridge filled with toner the function of the storage chip is to control matching between the imaging cartridge and the imaging device, and offer imaging auxiliary information in the subsequent imaging process. The storage chip performs information interaction with the imaging device via a communication interface (not shown) in the storage chip. The storage chip of the imaging cartridge is recorded with initial information of the imaging cartridge, including model color, recording material capacity, manufacturing date, manufacturer code of the imaging cartridge, as well as imaging auxiliary information in the subsequent printing process representing data of recording material residual/consumption. The storage chip plays major roles in identifying identities and providing a service condition of recording materials.
As the market competition becomes more and more fierce, and the imaging technology improves and popularizes, more and more compatible manufacturers begin to manufacture compatible imaging cartridges which can be comparable to the original imaging cartridge and also can be installed on the imaging device, and such kind of compatible imaging cartridges are popular among mass mid-and-low end consumers due to their low price. However, original manufacturers constantly update the storage chip on the imaging cartridge, so as to maintain their market shares, for example, to improve difficulty of the encryption algorithm, or to record a sequence number of the used storage chip in the imaging device, and the original manufacturers assign a unique sequence number to each original storage chip. Because the sequence number of the storage chip is set by original manufacturers and used to identify whether the storage chip is legal, the compatible storage chip provided on the compatible imaging cartridge can only use these legal sequence numbers, but the number of these legal sequence numbers is limited, it cannot be ensured that the sequence number on each compatible storage chip is unique, and thus it is difficult to avoid that the compatible storage chips with the same sequence numbers are successively installed on the same imaging device. Since the sequence number has been recorded by the imaging device after the first storage chip is installed on the imaging device, the subsequent storage chip with the same sequence number is determined as illegal when installed on the same imaging device. Obviously, it can cause that the imaging cartridge installed with these storage chips cannot be used, then such inexpensive compatible imaging cartridge cannot be used by the user, printing costs are greatly increased, a large amount of wastes occur.
In order to avoid these conditions, some compatible manufacturers design a storage chip for storing a plurality of different sequence numbers, set a jumper switch or a combined switch on the storage chip, which can select any of the sequence numbers through the jumper or a different combination of the switch. In this way, in use of the compatible imaging cartridge installed with such a storage chip, the user firstly select one of the sequence numbers, performs interactive communication with the imaging device with the selected sequence number, when the imaging device has recorded the sequence number in the memory of the imaging device, the sequence number is illegal, thus the storage chip cannot be accepted by the imaging device, and then the imaging device will notify the user via a display screen or by any other means. At this time, the user can take the imaging cartridge out of the imaging device, and select another sequence number by toggling the switch or setting the jumper. The above method is repeated until the sequence number in the storage chip is determined by the imaging device as legal, that is, brand new with respect to the imaging device.
Different types of imaging devices always record different numbers of sequence numbers, for instance, some imaging devices only can record one used sequence number of the storage chip, then the storage chip only need to store two different sequence numbers, and avoid that the sequence number is determined by the imaging device as illegal by means of constant rotation. However, some imaging devices can record tens of sequence numbers, and if selection is made by the jumper switch or the combined switch at this time, the selecting module will become exceptional bulky and complicated, which certainly will increase costs and manufacturing difficulty. Even though the storage chip only stores two sequence numbers, such a method for changing sequence numbers also needs to provide corresponding selecting module, since the storage chip is very fine, the selecting module generally can only be made compact, and it is inconvenient for the user to operate it. If selection only can be made after taking the chip out of the imaging cartridge, the operation becomes even more inconvenient.